Litanies & Prayers

As people of faith gather for prayer and praise, the first act is that of interrogation.

How long, oh Beloved, will you permit envy and enmity to choke the soil of our land and souls?

Why are the righteous silenced, the truth-tellers scorned?

Turning from darkness (death) to light (life) is a major theme in Scripture. But there is also a minority report, where darkness and shadow are the place of God’s abiding Presence.

Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry; give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit. Guard me as the apple of the eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings. (Psalm 17:1, 8)

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings. (Psalm 36:7)

Background: There are two great ironies behind the “Liberty Bell,” associated with the founding convictions of the United States of America and inscribed with the phrase “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and unto the inhabitants thereof.” The reference, from Leviticus 25:10, is a text that stipulates profound social renewal as part of God’s covenant with the Hebrew people, requiring the forgiveness of debt, reclamation of ancestral lands and the release of slaves every fifty years.

It is ironic, first, because the bell’s tolling to announce the opening of the first Continental Congress in 1774 was preface to the nation-building policies that enshrined slavery as a legal form of commerce. Indeed, throughout human history the lure of commercial gain often trumps humane political aspirations.

A second irony is that the bell, originally referred to as the “Independence Bell,” did not assume its current name until 1837 when it was adopted by the American Anti-Slavery Society as a symbol of the abolitionist movement.

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you, “Violence!” and you will not save?

We pound the doors of Heaven, shouting “Listen! Pay attention! Are you asleep!”

Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.

Sisters and Brothers, both near and afar, from our tribe or another, of whatever skin hue—whether chalky or chocolate—from Mars or from Venus or places in between: Come, gather round, turn your ear for the better to hear.

The pool of deliverance will soon be astir. A transforming immersion awaits your approach.

Come, all you whose lives have been poisoned with shame and crippled with regret.

Hear this, O People of the Dream: It is good and right that you recall the memory of

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the movement which mobilized him. The journey to the Beloved Community is sometimes dark and desperate and dangerous, and we need constellating light to orient our hearts and direct our feet.

Singing: God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
               Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
               Thou who hast by Thy might led us into the light,
               keep us forever in the path, we pray.

When Pentecostal power erupts, all heaven’s gonna’ break loose.

The boundaries will be compromised; barriers will be broken; and borders will be breached.

Economies of privilege will be fractured, and the politics of enmity will be impeached.

Dear Jesus: Don’t do that. Don’t go saying “I come not to bring peace, but division.” You’re scaring us. Don’t you know there are children in the room!

Peace is not the product of the politics of fear, of Wall Street fraud or war profiteer.

Listen, Lord, we need you to get back to being a sweet Jesus. Sweet little Jesus boy, born in a manger.

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it.*

And how are we to spend ourselves for the sake of the world that God loves? For the recognition? For the virtue?

For the hope of return in the future? Maybe for the pleasure?

Listen up, you heralds of hope: Hear the cheer of angels for your big, bold, even brassy acts of courage. Don’t back down from the chance to be audacious, bodacious, maybe even contentious.

Yet it is the tenacious on whom the Beloved most depends.

Quotidian faithfulness—in life’s persistent, unremarkable moments, when no bands play, no cameras roll, no headlines appear—this is the persevering labor which Redemption most employs. Ordinary time rocks.